DEMOCRATS ISSUE THREAT TO BLOCK COURT NOMINEES

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: March 27, 2004

WASHINGTON, March 26—
Senate Democrats, turning up the heat in their long-simmering feud with President Bush over judicial nominations, vowed on Friday to block all new federal court appointments unless the White House promises to stop installing judges while Congress is in recess.

''We will be clear,'' the Democratic leader, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, told his colleagues Friday morning in a pointed speech on the Senate floor. ''We will continue to cooperate in the confirmation of federal judges, but only if the White House gives the assurance that it will no longer abuse the process.''

In effect, the Democrats are retaliating against Mr. Bush for his recent decisions to bypass the confirmation process and place two nominees, Charles W. Pickering Sr. and William H. Pryor Jr., on the federal appellate bench while Congress was on vacation. The White House on Friday gave no indication it would agree to Mr. Daschle's demand.

''It's unfortunate, the lengths that Senator Daschle and a minority of Senate Democrats will go to to obstruct the nomination process at a time when we need our government to be at full strength,'' said Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman. ''He is suggesting that we leave these critical seats empty, and the American people deserve better.''

The exchange marked an escalation of an increasingly hostile battle between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill over Mr. Bush's judicial nominees. If the impasse between the White House and the Democrats is not resolved, and Mr. Daschle holds true to his threat, dozens of federal judgeships could remain vacant through this November's elections, and possibly longer.

The divide, which is already carrying over into this year's elections, is so deep that one Republican, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, complained on Friday that the Senate Judiciary Committee ''has spiraled down into partisan dysfunction in a way that is, frankly, not very pleasant.''

The breakdown, members of both parties said, came after Mr. Daschle met with the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, this week to warn him that Democrats would block all future nominees unless they received assurances from the White House that there would be no more recess appointments. Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who is a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he conveyed a similar warning to White House officials.

When no assurances were forthcoming, Mr. Schumer said, Democrats agreed that Mr. Daschle needed to state the Democrats' intentions publicly on the Senate floor.

''A group of us felt very strongly on the Judiciary Committee that the recess appointments were such a finger in the eye of the Constitution that we had to do something about it,'' Mr. Schumer said. ''We went to our caucus, and there was almost unanimous acceptance.''

The battle is over a relatively small number of judges. Since President Bush took office in January 2001, the Senate has confirmed 173 of his judicial nominees. But Democrats have used filibusters to block six nominees, including Judge Pickering and Mr. Pryor, to the appeals court, the level just below the Supreme Court.

Republicans, who have been unable to muster the 60 votes they need to break the filibusters, complain that Democrats are also using other tactics to delay consideration of nominees. Last year, Republicans were so frustrated with what one aide called Democratic ''foot-dragging'' that they staged a 30-hour filibuster of their own: an all-night talk-a-thon on the Senate floor to denounce the Democrats for refusing to allow a straight yes-or-no vote on the nominations.

''The Democrats should stop playing delay games and give all of the nominees the simple up-or-down vote the Constitution requires,'' Mr. Hatch said. ''It is the unprecedented filibusters by the Democrats that necessitated the recess appointments that the Democrats are now criticizing.''

In January, Mr. Bush used a Congressional recess to appoint Judge Pickering, a federal district judge whose civil rights record as a Mississippi lawyer had generated objections from Democrats. In February, Mr. Bush used another recess to appoint Mr. Pryor, the Alabama attorney general, who had gained prominence as an opponent of legalized abortion and an advocate for greater Christian influence in government.

The Constitution gives the president the authority to make recess appointments, but such appointments are temporary; lifetime appointments require Senate confirmation. Recess appointees may serve until the end of the next session of Congress. That means Mr. Pryor, who was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, may serve until the end of 2005. Judge Pickering, whose appointment to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, occurred before the current Congressional session, may serve until this fall.

There have been more than 300 judicial recess appointments in the nation's history, though the Congressional Research Service says few have occurred in recent years.

But Mr. Daschle and other Democrats said on Friday that Mr. Bush's use of recess appointments violated the intentions of the founding fathers.

''The genius of the founding fathers with the judiciary is summed up in two words: Lifetime appointment,'' Mr. Schumer said. ''Recess appointments violate that.''

In his remarks on Friday, Mr. Daschle asserted that no president has ''ever used a recess appointment to install a rejected nominee on to the federal bench,'' an apparent reference to Judge Pickering and Mr. Pryor, whose nominations were blocked from coming up for formal consideration. Mr. Daschle added, ''These actions not only poison the nomination process, but they strike at the heart of the principle of checks and balances that is one of the pillars of American society.''

According to the Senate Judiciary Committee, 47 judicial nominees are pending -- 27 are still being considered by the committee, and 20 nominations have been approved and sent to the full Senate. Republicans describe 23 of these vacancies as ''judicial emergencies,'' meaning that the courts in question have an extraordinary backlog of cases.